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An online charter school based in Reynoldsburg has been cited by a federal civil-rights office
for failing to adequately serve special-needs students.

Virtual Community School of Ohio, a statewide e-school overseen by the Reynoldsburg school
district, agreed to correct problems and be monitored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office
of Civil Rights. The office had been investigating whether the school discriminated against
students with disabilities since 2011 and announced its findings yesterday.

The agreement is the first of its kind, according to the department, because it deals with the
rights of disabled students to receive an appropriate education in an online charter school.

The department found that the charter school had not been properly identifying students who
needed extra help; if students didn’t have a special-education plan when they enrolled in the
school, the school did not often test struggling kids or provide special-ed services for them. VCS
must file a plan with the department by December to fix its problems.

The school opened in 2001 and has about 1,200 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. State
enrollment records show that about 24 percent of the students have a disability.

“Students with disabilities who attend online public charter schools are entitled to all the
protections of the federal civil-rights laws that their peers receive at traditional public
schools, including the right to receive a free, appropriate education,” Catherine E. Lhamon,
assistant secretary for civil rights, wrote in a statement yesterday.

VCS Superintendent Jeff Nelson said the school started to change its practices as soon as it
learned about the department’s concerns. Instead of meeting the January 2015 deadline, it’ll have
things done by January 2014, he said. “It seemed in working with them that primarily what we were
lacking was written, documented procedures.”

The online school has had other problems. VCS was on probation between July 2012 and May after
Reynoldsburg school officials became concerned about its financial standing and the former
superintendent’s practice of hiring his relatives.

The Reynoldsburg school board decided not to close the school after it provided a detailed plan
to get its finances straight, but it did take over operations and replace the school board in
May.